Hodgkin in the Window

When Doctor Joy said it was cancer—probably, maybe, because my blood cell count was low and the cells were speeding to the bottom of the test tube, suggesting inflammation, and perhaps more tests were needed, though mostly chemotherapy because, yes, this was lymphoma, but the good kind, the treatable kind, the we-detected-it-early kind, the let’s-attack-it-now kind—I immediately typed a message to Raj. I am dying. Then I deleted it, refusing him the satisfaction of partaking in my impending downfall.

“Do you have any questions, Marylin?” the doctor asked.

I had several, none of them about cancer. Raj was the only sore on my mind, the outgrowth I couldn’t make sense of. I thanked the doctor and hung up.

In the aftermath of hearing about the big C, I always assumed I’d call my sister, but here I couldn’t even muster up a tear. So goddamn cried out after the break-up, I lay on the floor forcing the sides of the mouth into a sad half-moon. I tightened the muscles to push out something, anything, but all I got was a drop of pee between my legs.

I didn’t mean to keep the diagnosis a secret, but telling carried the risk of someone showing up and bearing witness to my failing personal maintenance. Was it eight days since I’d had a shower?

I began to take a perverse pleasure in thinking the cancer had given me some sort of license to neglect basic hygiene. Wasn’t a mucky armpit a welcome reminder that, on some level, my body was still functioning? Behold the glands spitting salty liquid still! 

There were more pressing matters to attend to—a long list of why I needed to hate Raj.

*     *     *

It was lethargy, my ending up alone in the one-bed on Mona Square, a place so compact I now marveled at the notion that just a few months ago two people had fitted in. A bedroom, a bathroom with a shower, a kitchen adjoining a living room—the apartment was small enough that one could swing a finger to wipe it clean. And yet, in my current embrace of neglect, even tidying struck me as extravagant. I left the dishes to pile up in the sink and the dust to compact in the corners of the room.

Since I was now paying both halves of the rent, I’d been forced to pick up more work instead of throwing myself enthusiastically into grievance leave. I was sick of producing the academic papers for disengaged students—origins of the French Revolution, transnational student activism, juvenile delinquency in the GDR. Here I was denying today’s youth the joy of dissecting the nuanced policies of name-and-shame in a socialist utopia. Evidently, my moral codex was collapsing. I’d never been the most righteous of creatures, but there was a time when I used to believe in hard work: ten years ago, when employment carried the promise of a career, of launching my own agency someday. I’d never meant to be a ghostwriter for a generation of students coasting through university.

My rental included the bills; the staying alive cost extra. I subsisted on oatmeal and jam on toast—adequate sustenance though hardly the divine crunch of Raj’s home-baked bread nor the party-in-my-mouth cooking my sister provided: my smart, kind, caring sister who also happened to be a devoted cook. Before the kids, I took every opportunity to visit her for dinner, always begging for her avocado chocolate mousse. Oh, that buttery consistency! She would test her recipes on me like we were a couple trialing mattresses at IKEA—a bounce to her serve and plenty of chatter in between. Nowadays it was all spaghetti and baked potatoes. The young palate wants starch and it wants it fast.

Every so often, the company would forward notes of gratitude from students. My edits had earned them As or Bs on their papers. I asked for the forwards to be stopped because I’d already slipped from grace sticking around with Raj after he confessed to snogging Lily Mansfield in the park. The grass stains about his white corduroy shorts gave him away. That was the first month of lockdown. He just “had to” get it off his chest. Apparently that meant I needed to hear it. I bought new sheets and a scented candle as though bergamot masked infidelity. I put up an icy front, never allowing a smile, and fined myself the second I let one of his jokes slip through. The collected cash I donated to a local women’s shelter. I told him how much I hated his touch and the mouth brow he referred to as a “beard.”

Raj worked from the kitchen while I put up a desk in the bedroom. We squeezed past one another on the way to the bathroom without speaking; our angry sweat did all the conversing. In the evenings we ate his sourdough slathered in salted butter and dill shavings, and drank small tumblers of lager. Rarely did I gift him so much as a nod before turning down the lights. I wanted him to feel the emotional abandonment that must follow a betrayal. Perhaps I was the one who took the scolding to heart, turning into his teacher or, worse, his mother. I slipped into irrelevance.

We slithered through Christmas, mute like fish, and hit the end of the year picking up the occasional chit chat to the boom of fireworks. Then I found her messages on his phone—the I miss you, the You’re better than this (this being me), the Loved hearing your voice—and any lingering reservations I may have had about punishing him combusted. I called his mother and told her all about her cheating wiener of a son.

“I’m sorry to hear that, dear,” she said. I felt even less relevant after that, like a child who needed an adult to fight her battles. His mother rang him that evening. Afterwards, Raj demanded an explanation. I demanded the recipe for his sourdough.

“Fuck you,” he said, pulled the suitcase up from underneath the bed and threw his stuff into it.

Later, he blamed the confines of the apartment for our separation. I blamed his willingness to exchange spit with girls with flowery names.

“I shouldn’t have moved in,” he said and flashed his shiny teeth like a growling dog.

“Your smile looks fake,” I said. “Everyone thinks so.” But in the orange hallway glow, the long white fangs suddenly seemed real to me.

The next day he was back at it, dug up the National History magazines used for balancing the coffee table and all the other keepsakes that were his, not mine.

“Are you having a breakdown?”

“I’m packing,” he said.

“It’s a pandemic. Where will you go?”

“Probably mum’s.” This he said just to spite me. Never call a lover’s mother when it’s over. She must side with her baby.

We both knew he was going to stay with Lily. Beautiful, older Lily. Nine years calmer, almost a decade wiser, ten times more advanced in spreading her legs. Hers was the age when sex was actual fun. Somehow his choosing the older woman—not a day below 43—instead of defaulting to the men-in-midlife-crisis-mode of banging someone younger made it all the more biting.

I sucked on fresh ginger, hoping for the heat to burn my mouth and open the constricted throat. I’d stashed so many words detailing my dismay back there, but couldn’t assemble them into coherent arguments. After chewing fistfuls of the spicy root that seemed to peel the gums off the jaw bones, I felt no closer to placidness. I wanted to kill him and chain him to the bed all at once.

Then he was gone and I sobbed as though I needed buckets of tears to cool the skin after a fresh tattoo.

My loss I mourned with lavish purchases—new blazers and dresses I knew I’d never find occasion to wear. I felt so sorry for myself, all alone in Mona Square, that I cancelled all appointments with well-meaning friends to go for spins in the park. I wanted nothing but to indulge in my sorry state and cement this personal downfall by ordering pizza for breakfast and spiking my morning coffees with cream liqueur. Mrs. Rattinger in the apartment below dropped a note to inquire if Sinéad O’Connor was going to become a permanent fixture.

“It’s a bit sad,” she said when she saw me in the hall. I said I needed Sinéad in my life right now because I was dying, which was basically true, I just didn’t know it then. She sighed, combing through her raccoon hair with her keys.

It occurs to me now that the crying probably brought on the cancer. Was it not soon after that the stubborn lymph nodes erupted all over my body? Perhaps overuse of the tear ducts had inflated the nodes. First Raj broke my heart, then he broke my body.

Lump number one was just a tug in the groin. I ignored it like any good Brit, having sworn off acknowledging any ache that didn’t scream for a doctor’s gaze. To admit to a pain being real made it real and before long the whole thing would be chronic. If my sister’s pangs were anything to go by—fibromyalgia, migraines, tennis elbows—suffering ran in our genes.

I fumbled around for the lump, assuming it to be a shaving injury. Then I touched it some more as an excuse to keep busy, to keep my gosh darn obsessive mind off Raj. Four weeks later, I saw Doctor Joy. What followed were letters for scans and blood tests piling up on the communal stack down in the foyer with their “National Health Service—Confidential” in big blue letters on the front. I didn’t take them up immediately. Instead I propped them against the wall for Mrs. Rattinger to clap her eyes on, while belting Sinéad, swigging cheap Merlot, and surfing the Net to see if Sinéad fancied her reds too. I looked at pictures of lumps and bumps and slept at every opportunity. Google said I had lymphoma.

*     *     *

Soon lymph nodes bloomed everywhere—the neck and armpits too. I’d toy with these bumps, shoving them about, flattening them, testing if they’d bounce back all by themselves. These self-examinations I performed in bed before the glass wall of windows, unconcerned if a neighbor would peer in. Since Raj had left, I’d slept with the curtains open. He could only ever sleep in the darkest of dark, while I preferred the safety of the lights, those warm, yellow rectangles reassuring me of life nearby.

Even with Raj gone, I clung to my edge of the bed, knowing that if I rolled over, my nose would find his pillow and inhale the last, fading molecules of his aftershave—an archive of waves and sand and turtle poop.

Lying there, half asleep, I missed his jokes, spoken in some random accent he’d pluck from a character he’d seen on TV. I willed myself not to think of him, but then thought about him all the more. And that goddamn sourdough. My sister advised I should just bake my own, but I didn’t see the point because it could never be as good. Nothing replaces a lover’s loaf. During the most sleepless nights, I scrolled through feeds. Any updates he posted online, I examined with feverish scrutiny, always nervous to spot a mention of his “new” girlfriend. I didn’t want him to move on.

*     *     *

When finally I noticed the light in the opposing window, beaming daffodils behind mesh curtains, my night sweats were already in full swing. I’d wake around three thirty in the morning, my shirt clinging to my chest. Shivering, I’d peel myself from bed to swap into dry gear. And the neighbor’s lights would guide my hand to some old, dry top on the floor, night after night. Suddenly the light was always there, always on. Didn’t these people know we were in an energy crisis?

Once I’d taken note of the light, I couldn’t unnotice it. Right before sleep, I’d verify its presence and each predawn, while ripping soaked pajamas from my chest, I’d check to ensure it still flickered. Between the obtrusive head cinema starring Raj, I came up with scenarios as to what could have unfolded over there.

Perhaps the neighbors had left and kept the lights on to deter the burglars. But this was lockdown and even the burglars had been grounded. What if the neighbor had died by some efficient means—a stroke or heart attack—frozen before they had managed to race to the light switch? My mind kept cycling such macabre scenes, increasingly certain that a death had occurred. I scrutinized their curtains for the slightest movement until the electric yellow faded into streaks of daybreak. I told myself that if I truly believed death to be a plausibility, I’d have dialed emergency services already.

“It’s a thing in Hinduism,” my sister proposed. “Some religions keep the light on 24/7 to ward off evil spirits.”

“Like death?”

“For example.”

“I don’t think anyone’s home.”

“Spirits don’t take breaks.”

“I miss you,” I said and teared up a bit. I hadn’t seen sis in months. I thought of telling her then about the lymphoma. “I have cancer.” Such a simple sentence, elegant in its structure and quickly spoken. Yet, once uttered, there’d be nothing else she’d talk about. It would be cancer this and that, and a whole harvest of pity. She’d email cancer recipes and lists of supplements and addresses for alternative therapies. And I’d be grateful, maybe even try the acupuncture and some multivitamin while remaining unconvinced, so uncommitted to this here and now. And wouldn’t it be the nail in the coffin, the ultimate way to disappoint her—death for lack of trying? I hung up and went back to thinking about Raj.

*     *     *

Chemotherapy left me nauseated and breathless. The tiredness was a persistent reminder that the cells were being assassinated, bits of me eroding away. After my first round, I puked all over the carpet, purging myself back to a state of normality. Some days the nausea ran so deep, I wondered if I’d ever feel like myself again when my body’s very building blocks were being altered.

One Tuesday, after a particularly draining session and a brief lapse in willpower during which I almost called Raj but hung up right before the dial tone came on, I looked up flights to Portugal. April tenth. I wanted my mind to bend into an unknown direction. There’d be a blood test to take upon my exit and later on re-entry. Given the anemia, did I even have a drop of blood to spare?

I typed the long number on the front of my credit card. Marylin Lapso blowing her money on a mindfuck. Marylin Reckless. Marylin Therapy Appointment Queen. I shut the lid without hitting “confirm.”

In that moment, a flutter in my peripheral vision caught my attention. The neighbor’s window mesh had quivered. I leaned forward for a better look. A tuft of white, a pink nose, mustard eyes soaked in gloss, and a woolly coat slunk into view. Its gremlin eyes stared at me. We froze in assessing one another. Human. Animal. Animal. Human.

I waved my arms about in the air to stir it to move, but the cat wouldn’t budge. I moved my head back and forth, crashed my nose into the glass—the fluff ball wouldn’t blink. We sat there just staring at one another.

“Little shit!” I hissed and stomped off to the kitchen, unable to ignore my growling stomach for much longer. I dumped honey on a slice of bread and devoured it. It tasted like sweetened cardboard. I felt the pull back to my window. Was I really about to engage in a staring contest with a cat? Wouldn’t my time be better spent walking about Mona Square into Mona Park to point fingers at the swans and shout with full conviction, “Don’t they know it’s a pandemic?” Then the people would stop and stare before continuing on their walks, thinking me yet another unfortunate soul driven mad by isolation.

I poured water for a tea, contemplating a walk. But the sky was a grey carpet and I no longer felt like stepping into the boredom.

Back in the bedroom, the neighbor’s windowsill had been deserted. Oh, my god, they must have died, I thought. There’d been reports of elders passing, their pets gnawing their remains until a foul stench raised alarm.

“No, no. Just Hinduism,” I murmured to myself.

*     *     *

Our staring routine was contingent on my waking. Getting up during the night or the early morning hours, I’d gaze out and find the cat hovering, head cocked or licking its paws. We’d lock eyes. The trick was keeping them moist. So when the temperatures suddenly dropped, I wrapped up in an old ski suit and avoided the radiators until dusk because heat risked parching the eyes.

It was always there, stoic as porcelain. One morning, after a night tossing and turning and feeling as though the swollen nodes were ready to burst, I flung open my window and called for him.

“Hodgkin!” I yelled and pointed to the beast. A magpie shot up from the roof and disappeared into the crown of an oak. The cat’s gaze trailed the bird, then settled back on me, almost nodding as if to accept the name I’d given it. Hodgkin.

“Do you watch me while I sleep?” I asked.

“Most nights,” it said.

“You speak?” I clutched an empty coffee mug that sat abandoned on my desk.

“Of course I speak.” Hodgkin’s ears twitched.

It baffled me, this lack of astonishment, this absence of urge to dial up the BBC and have them drag Hodgkin into the limelight for a national TV spectacle. The truth was, I felt oddly content with this discovery. If anyone needed to speak with him, let them come find him. Right now, we were having a conversation.

“Doesn’t it bore you, to watch a person sleep?” I asked.

“Don’t be cruel! There’s no such thing as boredom in my world.”

“What do you do all day?”

“What do you do all day?”

“Mostly, I’m bored.” My motivation had dwindled to the merest trickle, a reservoir only for the most functional of performances.

“Humans!” It licked its paws and then proceeded to educate me. “I glide in and out of a trance, a mix of excitement, indifference, and apprehension.”

“I think of things I don’t want to think about.”

“That doesn’t excite me. What excites me are red laser dots and boxes filled with scented grass.”

“Do cats really have nine lives?”

Hodgkin sighed so that the glass in front of its nose fogged up.

“Cat lives are limitless. So long as I land on my paws and avoid licking the antifreeze from the windows. But throw me from the twentieth floor and the bones in my paws will shatter. If I land on a person, they might suffer a concussion. I won’t be excited about it, but I’ll be glad my death wasn’t in vain.”

“So it’s a lie?”

“A simplification. Death follows the living.” It yawned, unveiling its pointy fangs.

If ever it didn’t like my questions, it called me a “dim wit” or a “human” as though the latter was some grave insult. I ignored its remarks, too giddy for our chat. I was looking forward to them.

Hodgkin didn’t care for milk or touch. Mostly, it balanced on its hind legs while combing the ears and bending back to reach the fur in the farthest of places.

“You clean yourself a lot,” I remarked.

“Old habit. I see you get up in the night to clean yourself.”

“I have cancer.”

“Everyone has the capacity for cancer.”

“Mine could kill me.”

“And I may be thrown from a balcony. You’ve got to die of something.”

“I’d hoped to live longer.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Cry me a river! I’ve got half that.”

“There are things I’d like to do.” I pictured my funeral—a small gathering, white tulips everywhere, “Another One Bites the Dust” blaring from the speaker. My mother and sister, a scatter of distant cousins, uncles, aunts, long-lost friends murmuring “I think she had cancer,” maybe even Raj lurking in the background.

“Do what?” Hodgkin scoffed.

“Go to Hong Kong, eat street food, and get food poisoning. Watch my sister’s kids morph into unbearable teens, say ‘I told you so,’ and be the cool aunt they ask for advice. Watch Raj crawl back to me and wave him goodbye with true conviction.”

“Street food is overrated. The world’s brimming with know-it-alls. You’ve been adored. What seems new is a rerun in disguise.”

“So cynical for such a pretty cat.” And suddenly I felt sorry for Hodgkin. Was there not so much living to be done? In that moment, I wanted all the reruns I could get my hands onto.

“Good looks are a curse. I’m housebound because my fur is white and long. ‘Too pretty for the streets,’ they say, ‘someone might snatch you.’ But you … you’ve done life and now that it grows away from you, you want to jump ahead of it. Join me on the windowsill where existence creeps to a standstill.”

“You’re not familiar with a bucket list?” I prodded.

“Buckets. That’s where lists belong. I recommend chasing moving targets instead.”

*     *     *

The days were slow but the weeks raced by. We spoke all the time now. When I’d return from therapy appointments, Hodgkin sat in its spot as though it had been waiting for me all along. Some days I cried because my body was so exhausted. Hodgkin joked that my tears could water the cacti. At times, it labelled me “mindless” and “robotic” for losing a key or obeying my manager’s every order without question.

I gestured to the piece of bread in my hand. “At least I get to eat what I want,” I said and felt the crumbs land in my lap.

“You’re a slave to your thoughts,” it countered and licked the pink pads on its paws. “I’m an unsuccessful fugitive.”

“Doesn’t that make us the same?”

“Not really. The intention matters. You prefer to stay submissive.”

I shook my head, not because I disagreed, but because I didn’t want it to be true. And yet, here I was, still in Mona Square. And just then, I realized that I hadn’t thought of Raj in days. I waited for the promised relief to wash over me, but I wasn’t feeling anything in particular. Somehow thinking of him obsessively had locked me in the past. To be anchored in the present, to do away with the distraction, almost seemed like a threat. Now I’d be forced to do the living. I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. I laughed until I hiccupped.

We lost hair together. Hodgkin’s white fluff clung to the curtain. It seemed gaunt and slim without the thick coat. I waved to it and held up a bundle of my own strands that had fallen in the shower. The cat looked up and proceeded to lick its tail, pulling fine fur between the paws before spitting balls of the soft yarn.

“Where are your people?” I asked.

“In. Out. The man leaves me be. The woman brings me bowls of slush. When she lifts me up, I scratch her. She presses her ghastly perfumed face into my belly like I’m a pillow. I’m working on adding some weight, hoping she’ll drag me to the vet. The schmuck better recommend fresh air or my next scratch shall be lethal.”

“You’re funny.”

“You’re tragic.” It propped up its ears and crawled behind the curtain.

“Hodgkin, come back!” I pressed my face to the window. My lips tasted remnants of cleaning liquid.

The sky was pastel blue with rice puffs for clouds. I sat on the edge of my bed hoping for the curtain to flutter and for Hodgkin to return to its ledge. Maybe the woman had whisked it away to the vet. I waited for hours, the whole day, fixating on those unmoving curtains. When the phone rang, I didn’t answer. I couldn’t risk missing Hodgkin’s return. It rang twice more. The sun sank and there was still no sign of it. I listened to my voicemails.

“Hi Marylin, it’s Doctor Joy. I’m just looking at the last bit of bloodwork we’ve done. Give me a call. It’s looking good. Real good. I think we beat this thing.”

I immediately sent a text to sis. Call you in a bit. I was ready to tell. Then I fell asleep, dreaming of Hodgkin falling from its window and landing on my head.

ANNE FREIER

Anne Freier is a writer, musician, literary translator, and medical editor. Her writings have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New Plains Review (forthcoming), Southword, Miracle Monocle, Passengers Journal, and 1922 Review, among other publications. Her compositions have been performed at the Royal Opera House London Linbury Theatre and toured the UK. She is currently finishing a debut work of nonfiction and refining a collection of short stories.